Musings on Life in Delusional America

I moved to Indiana in the 1970s from Texas. I returned to Indiana briefly in the 1980s and the 1990s, when I left for good. I hope I never have to live in the state again. The only reason I would return to HoosierLand is because my son lives in the -iana part of Michiana. I would be more likely to live in the Mich- part, though the appeal of Michigan over Indiana is rather like chosing to vote for Democrats over Republicans. Voting Dem is the least worst choice since that political party is far less delusional and nowhere near as sociopathic and psychopathic as the Repub Party. Thankfully, I don't have to make the least worse choice at present because the state I live in presently is like many other US states. It is, particularly when it comes to federal politics, probably more of a one party state than the USSR ever was in its heyday. 

Indiana today, like many other so-called red states, is dominated by delusional thinking. Delusional thinking blames the morass that characterises large swathes of the US on, for example, high taxes on the rich and limits on the operation of the free market, something that links up with the delusional Horatio Alger myth and its magical thinking. The actual reason, of course, for economic distress in large parts of the US, including in Indiana, is deindustrialisation and globalisation. Both, of course, were polemicised for by members of both dominant political parties in the US since both dominant American political parties are cheerleaders for neoliberalism and were bought by and sold to economic elites many years ago. 

Deindustrialisation deindustriaised large swaths of the state including places like Hartford City. Globalisation brought corporate globalisation which benefited corporations and bankers. It certainly didn't benefit workers who are not free to move around the globe and seek out the best paying jobs, something that is, at least in theory, central to the capitalist myth of rational consumers. Globalisation also led to the dominance of the service or retail sector of America's economy, a sector of the economy that historically has low wages and limited, if any, benefits. 

That so many don't recognise this reality and prefer the simplistic rhetoric of scapegoating demagogues says it all. Of course, the manipulation or propagandisation of the masses for political and economic benefit is not new. Nor are the levels of delusional thinking. What has changed is the means and modes of communicating this sort of delusional thinking and the sociopathy at its heart.